On Life as Water It would be nice to have bones during a worldwide resurrection but I’ve lived earth and firmament so long I’m thinking fluid might be a better state, a new life not as a container but uncontained, wild and raging at the source then sluicing through adamantium rock until a flat plain means I diminish in the sea, evaporate, then launch again to fall, to etch, to wear, to nourish. There would be places I’d be desired, deserts, farms, and watersheds, places I could clean and weather, and places repentance I could symbolize. Perhaps that is what I most desire, a way to turn from one way and live as another, be given a second chance to run through the rock of hardened people, sustain the weak, wet the dry, purify, abound in the endless cycle of delivering from torment, rising to grace, all those motions that my toughened self has often not permitted. Perhaps that is why, when, without a reason, I weep, joy, grief, sentiment, loss and victory, birth, death, sex and intimacy all bind in that slim meniscus of water, and I know myself deeply, briefly, in a drop.
Jeff Burt lives in California with his wife. He has work in Williwaw Journal, Willows Wept Review, Heartwood, and Rabid Oak.
Amethyst Review 